y man
coming forward coolly at this time of day, and telling the readers of
English poetry, whose ear has been tuned to the lays of Spenser, Milton,
Dryden, and Pope, that he makes his metre 'on a new principle!' but we
utterly deny the truth of the assertion, and defy him to show us _any_
principle upon which his lines can be conceived to tally. We give two or
three specimens to confound at once this miserable piece of coxcombry
and shuffling. Let our 'wild, and singularly original and beautiful'
author, show us how these lines agree either in number of accents or of
feet.

'Ah wel-a-day!'
'For this is alone in--'
'And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity'--
'I pray you drink this cordial wine'--
'Sir Leoline'--
'And found a bright lady surpassingly fair'--
'Tu--whit!----Tu--whoo!'

_Kubla Khan_ is given to the public, it seems, 'at the request of a poet
of great and deserved celebrity;'--but whether Lord Byron, the praiser
of 'the Christabel,' or the Laureate, the praiser of Princes, we are not
informed. As far as Mr Coleridge's 'own opinions are concerned,' it is
published, 'not upon the ground of any _poetic_ merits,' but 'as a
PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITY!' In these opinions of the candid author, we
entirely concur; but for this reason we hardly think it was necessary to
give the minute detail which the Preface contains, of the circumstances
attending its composition. Had the question regarded '_Paradise Lost_,'
or '_Dryden's Ode_,' we could not have had a more particular account of
the circumstances in which it was composed. It was in the year 1797, and
in the summer season. Mr Coleridge was in bad health;--the particular
disease is not given; but the careful reader will form his own
conjectures. He had retired very prudently to a lonely farm-house; and
whoever would see the place which gave birth to the 'psychological
curiosity,' may find his way thither without a guide; for it is situated
on the confines of Somerset and Devonshire, and on the Exmoor part of
the boundary; and it is, moreover, between Porlock and Linton. In that
farm-house, he had a slight indisposition, and had taken an anodyne,
which threw him into a deep sleep in his chair (whether after dinner or
not he omits to state), 'at the moment that he was reading a sentence in
Purchas's Pilgrims,' relative to a palace of Kubla Khan. The effects of
the anodyne, and the sentence together, were prodi